John Washington was born in New York, raised in Ohio, living in the Arizona borderlands, with a few things in between. Currently an adjunct at the University of Arizona, teaching fiction and creative non-fiction. Also working as a freelance journalist and translator. He claims he focuses his days on his novels.

It seems that on one of the mentioned in-betweens, he decided to go down to southern Mexico. Not only did he learn the language of the locals, but actually decided to work with that language. And he lived among the locals. He lived with them and he lived them.

The love story between a CIA operations officer assigned to the Counterterrorism Center –who is also bipolar and broken– and a former US Marine Corps platoon sergeant –who was also a prisoner of war and a terrorist or former terrorist or broken– is impossible.

*This piece was read along with others by awesome San Diego writers at the Seahorse Poetry show yesterday in Springfest at the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, California. Some pictures here. Special thanks to Nicolee Kuester for the invitation.

The Streets Between the Seahorses and Me was last modified: May 14th, 2015 by Marco Antonio Huerta

Sandra Doller’s most recent book is an open invitation. It is a request and also a set of instructions. It could be a poem, a collection of aphorisms, and a memoir. It could be a meticulous description of another life in another timeline. There’s a clear voice in Sandra Doller’s writing that compels us to tell the difference between waving hello and waving goodbye.

We are all witnessing the effects of capitalism over our present times in the forms of abstraction of work, the disembodiment of the conscience, and the dematerialization of the commodities. The Italian Marxist Franco “Bifo” Berardi attributes the origin of this great transformation through abstraction to the development of finance:

Finance is the most abstract level of economic symbolization. It is the culmination of a process of progressive abstraction that started with capitalist industrialization. Marx speaks of abstract labor in the sense of an increased distancing of human activity from its concrete usefulness. In his words, capitalism is the application of human skills as a means to obtain a more abstract goal: the accumulation of value[i].

On this particular situation he states that the most important changes in societies due to the dematerialization and the general abstraction of the economic rules and procedures are the disembodiment of the “general intelligence”, a concept he uses sometimes in terms of a representation of the cognitive group of workers whose labor is now exploited; the deterritorialization of labor and productivity, that ignited a process of pulverization and precarization of work and worker; the end of growth as a concept related to the “increase of social happiness and satisfaction of the basic needs of people”, but instead the expansion of financial profits and the expansion of the global volume of exchange value. He talks about “the new alienation” occurring in the cognitive worker by precarization and the acceleration of the information flow and productivity. All of these transformations are symptoms of the general intelligence as disembodied, taken away from its own social and erotic body.

this inaugural post is dedicated to Sara Uribe and Kim Schreiber, both generous and kind

I left my country on the 204th anniversary of its independence. I took a plane. I wasn’t really thinking too much. I wasn’t really paying attention. I just thought it was the best day to leave given the circumstances. As a very dear friend would tell me later, mocking me: “only the unpatriotic and the stateless leave their homeland right on its Independence Day celebrations.” I felt unpatriotic. I was rendered stateless. I sensed I was leaving a lot behind. Also I suddenly realized there were a whole lot of events coming right in front of me. Perhaps more than I could actually foresee. More than I can imagine. I left Mexico on September 15, 2014 in order to start a new adventure in life. I had chosen to keep my academic career going. I’d decided I wanted to recover my writing career as well, after four years in public service. The opportunity was before me when I sent my application so stand for the Master in Fine Arts degree in Writing at the University of California, San Diego. I got accepted. A whole new ground of possibilities was suddenly open before me. But at the moment, as I was crossing the U.S. border, I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t know a thing.

Besides acquiring formal education in writing for the first time, I now have the chance to explore the recent writing techniques and theories, and put them in practice in my own writing. I’m attracted to the experimental approach on writing of the MFA program. One of my main goals is to address current Western Culture societies in conflict based upon evidence found through language. My interest is chiefly aimed at language as a community builder. On exploring how language binds us together as a community. Which could be the principles that make us hold together even though it may seem societies are falling apart? (There are many making that statement nowadays.) Upon the rise of Internet as the almighty machine that has radically affected the concept of writing; I’m particularly interested in working with virtual communities. Language shown in the user comments of sites around the World Wide Web is of a very different kind than any other used in any other support. Nonetheless it works as adhesive when establishing relationships, encouraging dialogue, and building communities. But it is also a language based more frequently upon anonymity/identity, context[s], shared or unshared. What do user comments across the Internet stand for when referring to commonality?

I’m infatuated with Western Culture. How does the West talk about love in the twenty-first century? I’m interested in researching and updating through writing experimentation what Freud theorized about the Eros & Thanatos duality. Is Western Culture closer to death, aggression, and destruction in the twenty-first century? If this is considered true, then: In what ways is Eros defined by Western Culture in the now? How can our present be defined based upon the relationship established between eroticism and destruction, particularly one that is perceived through public language across the Internet and other ‘new’ media? How do these relationships define our global communities therefore? What does all of this say about human condition?

Welcome to Enclave

Welcome to Enclave, a community blog and internet space where the literary community can share their enthusiasm for literary & non-literary ideas, fiction, poetry, film, music, current events, and other forms of creative culture. Enclave’s contributors represent different literary communities, corners, and aesthetics but share one thing in common: the desire to express themselves openly, urgently, and without a shred of dishonesty. At Enclave, we are artists looking to share our passion for creativity and formal expression. We hope you’ll stick around. Strike up a conversation. We’re all coping here.